1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to displaying a plurality of items on a display region, and, more specifically, to meaningfully displaying a plurality of items on a display region with a relatively small area.
2. Related Art
Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are routinely used to provide visual interfaces between applications and users. Displayed in a region on a screen, a GUI provides one or more menus, each containing a plurality of items. By selecting an item from a menu, a user can invoke an application, input parameters for running an application, or invoke a sub menu. Frequently, the items in a menu are text based. Thus, when multiple items are closely listed in a menu, a user needs to take effort and concentration to locate and select a desired item from the menu. To make a GUI more user friendly, a menu often displays icons (or symbols) beside respective textual menu items, so that users have visual aids to locate and select a desired item from the menu. However, when a display region has a relatively small area (such as a LCD screen on a cellular telephone), displaying icons (or symbols) together with their respective menu items makes the display region cluttered, thus increasing the difficulty for a user to locate and select a desired menu item.
There is, therefore, a need for a method and apparatus to provide an improved Graphic User Interface (GUI) for displaying icons (or symbols) together with menu items, without compromising the advantage provided by the icons (or symbols).
The present invention provides a method and apparatus to meet this need.